The Internet has made it possible for people to connect and share information across the globe in ways previously undreamt of. Social media platforms, for example, enable people on opposite sides of the world to collaborate on ideas, discuss current events, or just share what they had for lunch. In the past, this spectacular resource has been somewhat limited to communications between users having a common natural language (“language”). In addition, users have only been able to consume content that is in their language, or for which a content provider is able to determine an appropriate translation.
While communication across the many different languages used around the world is a particular challenge, several machine translation engines have attempted to address this concern. Machine translation engines enable a user to select or provide a content item (e.g., a message from an acquaintance) and quickly receive a translation of the content item. However, content items can be inaccurately translated due to translation rules that do not account for the semantics of the content item being translated. For example, variants of the same language (e.g., American English versus British English), different meanings of the same word or phrase, non-standard phrases (e.g., slang), etc., can result in machine translation inaccuracies. For example, the word “lift” can mean “move upward” among speakers of American English (as that word is commonly used in America), whereas it can mean “elevator” for British English speakers. A content item including the phrase, “press the button for the lift,” could be translated into either “press the button for the elevator” or “press the button to go up.” In addition, machine translations of a content item are often based on dictionary translations and do not consider context, which often makes a significant difference such as in slang or colloquial passages.
The techniques introduced here may be better understood by referring to the following Detailed Description in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like reference numerals indicate identical or functionally similar elements.